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Target's Cyber Monday traffic 2X previous record

Shoppers on Target's (NYSE:TGT) website on Cyber Monday placed orders two times faster than ever before, making it the retailer's busiest online sales day ever.

For the first time, Target offered 15 percent off all merchandise, site-wide. Demand was so high, the site crashed and shoppers were put into virtual lines to manage the volume. At some point early in the day, the website was down entirely.

"Both traffic and order volumes are exceeding Target's Thursday Black Friday event, which was our biggest day ever for online sales. To help manage the volume, we have been metering traffic to the site. We have teams working diligently to restore Target.com to full functionality," a Target spokesperson said in a statement.

PayPal and Neiman Marcus also had trouble handling high volume over the holiday weekend. Demand on Thanksgiving Day also outpaced last year, making it Target's biggest day for online sales to date, until Cyber Monday.

"We knew there'd be a tremendous response to our 15 percent off site-wide offer, and the demand was even higher than we anticipated," said Jason Goldberger, president of Target.com and mobile. "Early in the day, Target.com orders were coming in twice as fast as our busiest day ever. And by early in the night, Target had already surpassed the previous record for online sales—making Cyber Monday our biggest online sales day ever."